Life Pattern

Category: Misc

Ръзни

  • Rudopia 2007

    Every year the Bikearea Association organises a series of bike tours in the Bulgarian mountains. The highlight of these events is the 10 days and 440 km long trip in the Rhodopi mountains known as Rudopia (Рудопия). Last year I, my brother Dave and my friend Niki participated for the first time in this tour and enjoyed it very much.

    In the train from Sofia to Velingrad

    The special thing about 2007 trip, at least for me and Niki, was that we decided to carry all of our hiking gear with us. Bikearea provides accompanying transport for these tours and you only need to take your daily luggage with you – a bottle of water, some food for the day and basic bike repair parts and tools. In case of more severe bike break down you just have to get your bike to the nearest road that is accessible by the accompanying bus and that’s usually less than 10 kilometers.

    However we thought that this is the perfect way to test whether it is feasible to go on a week long, self-sustained mountain bike tour carrying all of our equipment including:

    • Bike parts, tools and accessories;
    • Hiking gear like tent, sleeping pad and sleeping bag;
    • Clothes, personal hygiene items and med pack;
    • Two days worth of food and 2 liters of water.

    Overall my luggage weighted 14 kg just as much as my bike weights. 9 kg in a backpack and 5 kg on a rack mounted on my bike’s the saddle stem. If anything went wrong we would have simply fallen back to the Bikearea’s bus services.

    You’d be amazed how much do these 14 kg weight when you are on a 440 km trans mountain journey. Especially as we’ve participated in the 100 km around Vitosha MTB marathon just the previous week. We were consistently riding behind the main group and that’s how we become close friends with George. He had recently returned from the US, where he was studying in MIT, and bought a bike just one month before Rudopia. He was kinda newbie and was riding slower so our speed matched well 🙂

    Our tents are orange The four riders

    The Rudopia route is selected for light bikers and it was quite a struggle for us to keep up with the speed of the rest of the group. Nevertheless I succeeded to ride in full gear for five days before giving up. I decided I will go light for the day we were crossing from western into the eastern Rhodopi mountain.

    Preparing to cross from Western into the Eastern Rhodopi mountains Reversed roles

    Overall this was very useful experience. Now I know much better what my capabilities are. I know what constitutes good bike hiking pack list as well.

    Back in Sofia

  • La piovra di Bulgaria

    I don’t usually talk politics – neither in real life nor in this blog and the other forms of online communication. Just as I avoid talking about religion. There’s no point in offending strangers by trying to impose your religious, political or let’s say sports views. You don’t think you are going to change someone that easy, do you? Sharing your opinion with close friends or relatives is another story.

    But I went on writing this story because it’s not that much about politics as in one party vs another or why this president is worse than the previous one. It’s about crime, corruption, indifference and the lack of civil society in my country.

    Almost 20 years after the so called democratic transition we still don’t have a properly working and credible juridical system. Around 150 assassinations have taken place on the streets of Bulgarian cities in the past 8 years. To date, only one organised crime boss has been arrested (afaik). No senior official has been convicted of corruption.

    Bulgaria is a member of the EU since 2007 but even this doesn’t help much. Despite the pressure and the negative reports from various EU organs the situation doesn’t seem to improve. Criminal networks extend into government and effectively block all the (anyway weak) incentives on fighting crime.

    I know corruption is to be found in almost every country out there – it is quite big problem in Greece and very serious one in Italy but it is particularly brutal in Bulgaria.

    Add the people’s indifference and now I’m really scared that the mafia will prevail. That we’ll be kicked out of the EU and will ultimately and completely degrade to a mafia driven oligarchy. There are many Bulgarian citizens who believe that the later has already happened.

    When the organised criminal networks are so deeply embedded in the state’s government maybe it is people’s duty to fight back. If the law fails to address the issue then people should do it. Usually civil society’s greatest successes come in the domains where the state is too weak or doing too little: ecology, social assistance, human rights. Unfortunately in our case I’m afraid this ain’t gonna work. I have this feeling that a large portion of the population perceive mafia members as a role models. They are trying to imitate, to copy them. On one hand the criminals have nice cars, houses, etc. and on the other hand it is extremely difficult to achieve higher status without being involved in bribing practices, without knowing and working with particular people, without getting your hands dirty. So it is the “normal” way to proceed – it is regarded as something to pursuit, something to strive for and not something to fight against. Very short sighted. That’s why I think that a large portion of our society is ill and our chance to escape from the octopus tentacles are diminishing.

    I’m definitely not a big patriot. I felt comfortable anywhere in the world I’ve been so far. But although I agree with the saying that a people deserve their rulers there are many good people who will stay in Bulgaria regardless of the hopelessness of the situation. I have friends and relatives here. That’s why I still care.

    So, what could people do to fight the octopus? What can I personally do? Mutter to oneself? Bleat out a protest? Involve in politics? Revolution?

    The problem with revolutions is described very well by Mao Zedong:

    Revolution is not a dinner party, nor an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly, and modestly. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

    Unfortunately it’s not enough to just obey the law, pay your taxes and vote in the elections. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past 15 years and it doesn’t seem to suffice. To quote Edmund Burke: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

    By the way do you know which are the most desired countries to live in the world? Take a look at this map.

  • Urgency vs Importance

    As I have a vested interest in project management methodologies I will continue with my thoughts about some of the most fundamental aspects of the gentle art of managing tasks.

    One of the most common mistakes that I repeatedly have done throughout the years and especially in my early years as a system administrator was this of not differentiating between urgency and importance of the tasks. Now I’m convinced that the importance is much more important (pun intended) and I think I’m much better at identifying projects and tasks importance. In my opinion having only the idea of priority without considering both urgency and importance is flawed and doesn’t work well.

    But let’s first take a look at what does the dictionary say about these two words. According to wiktionary important is something that has relevant and crucial value, something that is central or essential. And to quote:

    1988, Robert Ferro, Second Son

    For this was the most important thing, that when a person felt strongly about an issue in life, it mustn’t be ignored by others; for if it was, everything subsequent to it would turn out badly, even though there should seem to be no direct connection.

    So these are the things that lay foundations of what you are doing. The essentials. Things that you may delay but you can’t skip because your undertaking would eventually fail.

    And what is urgency? It comes from the Latin urgente (‘pressing’). Urgent is something that require your immediate attention. Something that should be dealt with right away or it may pass away.

    But here’s the problem – many urgent tasks which are not really important tend to look like they are important just because they pop up from nowhere and steal your attention. Usually they are quite obvious and you feel pressured to get them done.

    And how’d you tell whether a task is important or urgent (it may be both)? This one is harder to tell… but if you look at the definitions given above there are two questions you may ask:

    • what would really happen (in the long run) if I delay or skip this task?
    • does this task move me any closer to my life goals?

    For example Steven Covey has defined four quadrants of time management:

    Urgent Not Urgent
    Important Q1: disasters, crises, deadlines Q2: prevention, planning, recreation
    Not Important Q3: interruptions, distractions, popular activities Q4: trivia, busy work, time wasters

    Examples for Q1 activities, which are both urgent and important, are fire in the kitchen, crying baby, very important project with approaching deadline.

    Q2 activity is to make sure your kitchen is fire code compliant so there’s a smaller chance of catching fire, planning your projects as to avoid deadline crises, improving your skills or making sure you are in top shape by getting enough exercises and quality rest.

    Q3 and Q4 should be avoided as much as possible. Q3 contains things like unimportant phone calls, interruptions from colleagues, IM, short term urgent stuff and fixing minor problems around. Q4 is where trivial tasks or things like watching TV lie. It’s ok to spend some time here if it’s part of a planned downtime – time when you’re refreshing yourself but try to keep it to the minimum.

    I personally try to calculate priority as a combination of urgency and importance. I usually use the formula (urgency + importance) / 2 and then may subjectively adjust the result according to my intuition. For example if a task has 100% for urgency but only 30% for importance it’s priority is 65% and then I decide where it stands compared to other tasks that are already on my list and may further increase or decrease it’s priority. Sometimes I may drop it altogether because there are tasks with higher priority and it’s just not possible to complete the new task on time.

    In order to evaluate a task’s importance you should have clear goals and values defined but that’s a subject for another blog entry 🙂

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